Forsberg: Stevens' fingerprints were all over Celtics' Game 1 rally

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SAN FRANCISCO -- How appropriate that, on his 365th day in office, Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens watched his two boldest roster additions spearhead the team’s fourth-quarter outburst during a Game 1 win over the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

Al Horford and Derrick White paired up for 17 fourth-quarter points on 6-of-7 shooting, including a quartet of 3-pointers, fueling an offensive eruption after Jaylen Brown lit the team’s fuse at the start of the frame.

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Stevens’ decision to utilize future first-round picks as part of acquiring both Horford and White was met with understandable scrutiny. It was a departure from the previous administration where Danny Ainge typically only moved first-round picks for surefire, top-level talent (like giving up a 2018 first-rounder as part of the Kyrie Irving swap).

There was no guarantee that Horford, who turned 36 on Friday, would find a fountain of youth in Boston, though certainly there was hope that familiarity with this core could aid that. The Celtics sacrificed the 16th pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, which eventually became Alperen Sengun, whom sources have suggested would have been Boston’s pick had they never moved off that spot.

When the Celtics were struggling early in the year, it was fair to look at the raw potential of the 19-year-old Sengun and wonder how he could have grown alongside Boston’s other core pieces. But Horford’s playoff exploits have been so great that it makes you wonder if pick-craving Oklahoma City should have asked for even more draft compensation in the swap.

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After playing well enough to put his name in the conversation for Eastern Conference Finals MVP, Horford produced a monster second half in Game 1 of the Finals, scoring a team-high 18 points on 6-of-7 shooting after the intermission.

Every time defenders strayed in the fourth quarter, Horford made the Warriors pay for giving him clean looks -- all this while Horford defended a team-high 18 shots overall. The Warriors were 7-of-18 shooting with Horford as the primary defender.

There is an urgency to Horford’s play. While so much has been made about Boston’s Finals inexperience and the way the team is set up to potentially compete on this stage deep into the future, Horford had to wait 15 seasons to get to this stage. With his young son sitting next to him at the podium after Game 1, you could tell how much he is savoring this opportunity.

"Just grateful to be in this position," said Horford. "God has put me in this position and it's something that I embrace and I'm excited about. Just excited to be able to share this stage with this group of guys.

"We have a lot of great guys here, guys that have really bought into what we're trying to do. It's just fun to see all that come together."

Boston’s roster truly came together after the February acquisition of White. Stevens again splurged, sending out a former lottery pick (Romeo Langford), a solid veteran (Josh Richardson), a 2022 first-round pick (which landed at No. 25), and a potentially risky future pick swap.

But the Celtics viewed White as someone that meshed perfectly with the core, had familiarity with first-year coach Ime Udoka's staff coming from San Antonio, and was under contract for three more seasons at reasonable money.

White’s shot defied him early in these playoffs but he’s found a groove lately. White scored 21 points -- becoming the first Boston reserve to top 20 points in a Finals game since Leon Powe did it in Game 2 of the 2008 Finals -- on 6-of-11 shooting, while making 5 of 8 3-point attempts. White was a plus-25 in 32 minutes of floor time in Game 1.

White’s biggest impact might have been on the defensive end. Taking on the challenge of chasing Stephen Curry, White limited the former MVP to five points on 2-of-6 shooting when he was Curry's primary defender. The Warriors were 5-of-14 shooting overall when White was the primary defender, per NBA tracking data.

White went to the podium alongside Marcus Smart and got showered with praise from the Defensive Player of the Year.

"Watching him play before we got to [Team] USA, [White] reminded myself a little bit of me," said Smart. "So just instantly, off the bat, I loved the way he played. Coming into that when we would practice, he was never backing down no matter what. When you got a guy like that ... it's always going to be some battles.

"Every day he's done something new to make you go, 'That's why he's here.'"

For the entirety of Boston’s playoff run, White has a net rating of plus-11.2. Only Payton Pritchard (plus-13.2) has a higher mark among regulars. White slots just ahead of Horford (plus-10.7).

White’s addition, along with moving on from the Dennis Schroder experiment, was the final step in Boston really finding its groove. The Celtics had already built a little momentum before White’s arrival but were not surefire contenders. That didn’t stop Stevens from leaning into this core with hope that the team would launch.

White’s presence locked in an eight-man rotation that Udoka could confidently trust would not experience a defensive drop-off.

Stevens deserves credit for not lingering on his initial moves. While Richardson and Schroder had their moments in Boston, this team probably isn’t in the Finals without the in-season splurge to add White based on his overall playoff impact.

Stevens’ finest move, even beyond the Horford and White acquisitions, was installing Udoka in his former role.

Stevens selflessly identified a candidate with the potential to push his core players in a way that Stevens simply could not. Udoka has routinely pressed the right buttons throughout these playoffs, including the decision to go small in the fourth quarter of Thursday’s Game 1 which sparked Boston’s offensive outburst.

One year into his new gig, Stevens is being rewarded for his boldness. Ainge and much of his staff held over after his departure deserve credit for utilizing the team’s draft picks to build the core of the team. (Jayson Tatum, Brown, Smart, Robert Williams III, Grant Williams, and Pritchard were all Boston draft selections.) But Stevens wasn’t bashful about dipping into an already-thinned treasure chest of draft picks with hopes of a bigger treasure.

Stevens splurged but might have found the missing pieces for this Celtics puzzle.

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